


Friends and Lovers

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [31]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, M/M, not actually RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a> prompt: "any. Any/any. 'We can be lovers tonight, or friends forever." John confronts Evan about his feelings for Joe. Set post-series, after But It Works For Us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends and Lovers

John waited until Jeannie and her family left before he confronted Evan about what he'd overheard between him and Rodney in the kitchen. He waited until Jennifer and Rodney were out on one of their regular date nights, then cornered Evan in the kitchen. He'd thought about waiting till Evan was settled in his studio, but the kitchen was neutral territory, and if one or both of them needed to retreat, they'd both have somewhere to go.

Evan was elbow-deep in a bowl of cookie dough when John said, "Is it true?"

Evan glanced over his shoulder. "Is what true?"

"Are you really in love with Joe?"

Evan's hands stilled.

"Because apart from that one art thing on Atlantis and him cuddling with you during movies, mostly he spends time with Rodney doing math," John said.

Evan sighed and fished his hands out of the bowl, scraped as much dough as he could back into the bowl, and went over to the sink to wash his hands. John watched him without prodding for further conversation. Evan was meticulous about his baking, and he covered the dish of dough and put it in the refrigerator before he cleaned off the counter. Then he turned and faced John, arms crossed over his chest, gaze wary.

"Or was Rodney right, and you're in love with me, but Joe is all you can have?"

Evan shook his head. "I wasn't lying the night I told you – or Joe, I suppose – that I'm not in love with you. He was touch-starved, and so we did an...art thing." For one second he looked amused at John's discomfort with what had transpired between him and Joe, but then his expression darkened and he looked away.

"You haven't answered my question," John said. Julian the law clerk was impressed at Evan's ability to prevaricate.

Evan took a deep breath. "How much do your imprints remember?"

John blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Do they all have perfect recall of the lives Topher programmed for them, or do they have the same memory decline the rest of us have?"

"Apart from Julian with the eidetic memory and Architect with the photographic memory and Brendan with the I'm-not-sure-what memory, their memory skills are about average. Some have better memories than others. You know. Traci has the attention span of a gnat." John shrugged. "Why?"

"Doesn't matter," Evan said. "Even if I were in love with Joe, he's not – not just himself. He's you too. And you're in love with Rodney."

John narrowed his eyes at Evan. "You still haven't answered my question."

"What does the answer matter? Nothing can change between us." Evan crossed the kitchen, picked his car keys out of the basket. "I need to get some almonds from the grocery store. You want anything while I'm there?"

John sighed. "Evan –"

But Evan pushed past him and headed for the door.

 _Let him go,_ Joe said.

The front door closed quietly, but the sound was final all the same.

"What do I do now?" John sighed.

 _I could talk to him,_ Julian said. _I got excellent grades in mediation and arbitration in law school._

 _You also have the emotional intelligence of a gnat,_ Joe said. _Let me talk to him. Alone. Completely alone._

Complete withdrawal from consciousness was something John never did while he was awake. While he was asleep there was every risk that one of the imprints could run amok with their body, but they'd worked out an honor system, and everyone agreed to it. Even when John had been captured and tortured and let the imprints take torture sessions for him, he'd never fully withdrawn from awareness.

John wondered if Evan's patience would ever come to an end. From the first day he'd set foot on Atlantis till the moment he'd become Evan instead of Lorne and part of the Sheppard-McKeller household, he'd always shouldered the unseen burdens, fought the inglorious battles. John knew he took advantage of Evan's willingness to listen, that they all did. He wondered how all of his many personalities had missed Evan's attraction for Joe when Rodney had managed to figure it out.

It was because Evan was so careful, John realized. He treated John as John no matter which imprint was in control unless it was Joe, and even then when he indulged Joe's need for touch he never asked Joe for anything in return.

 _The really interesting part of that conversation was Evan's inquiry into our memory skills,_ Julian said.

"He was just trying to distract me," John muttered. He sat down at the kitchen table, and he thought. No, the better choice would be to brood in his own room. When Evan got back from the store, he'd want to get back to making his cookies, and he deserved to feel like the kitchen was a safe space. John ambled back to his bedroom, hands in his pockets. Despite Evan's evasion, John was pretty sure Rodney was right. Evan was in love with Joe. But how?

 _I think Evan answered the question, whether intentionally or not,_ Julian said. _Although I think the more important consideration is not 'how' but rather, what do we do about it?_

"Dammit, Julian, quit talking in circles. Didn't they teach you to lead with the conclusion in law school?"

 _You dislike it when I think like a lawyer,_ Julian said peevishly.

 _I think,_ Joe said, _What he means is that Evan fell in love with me sometime before, and I can't remember._

John drew up short at his own bedroom door. "Before when? I've known your your entire adult life. You grew up in Nebraska, I grew up in Virginia, he grew up in California. You were practically my shadow freshman year at Stanford. I'm pretty sure I'd remember having met him back then."

 _Would you?_ Julian asked. _There was an awful lot of debauchery your first year. And as you pointed out, you suffer the same rate of memory decay as a normal person, me, Brendan, and Architect aside. Do you remember your first year of college in perfect detail?_

"Do you remember everything, Joe?" John asked.

 _My memory's a bit spotty,_ he admitted.

John sighed and sat down on his bed. "This is giving me a headache. I'm done thinking for the night. Who wants to knit? I want to knit."

Traci piped up. _Can we watch some Drop Dead Diva while we knit?_

John fired up his laptop. "Sure." He pulled his latest knitting project onto his lap - mittens for Rodney, who was a pansy in the snow despite being Canadian - and set to work.

Traci must have mostly taken over, because when John came back to full awareness one mitten was done, they were a third of the way through the second season of the show, and there was noise from Evan's bedroom. John paused Netflix and set aside his knitting, stood up.

He padded down the hall to Evan's room. The door was slightly ajar. He was going to apologize and let Joe handle the issue from here on out, since it was really Joe's problem anyway (up to a point; Joe and he were sharing a body still).

But stopped when he saw Evan, shirtless and barefoot in a pair of jeans, rooting through his drawers for a t-shirt.

The image was overlaid with a memory. John was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, watching Evan - a much younger Evan - getting dressed in the darkness.

And suddenly, _Joe_ remembered. That night in the club in San Francisco, their kick-off party before they headed down to Mexico for Spring Break. John had rented a penthouse hotel suite for the two of them and whatever ladies they could bag at the clubs that night. Only Joe had danced with a boy named Evan, and they'd gone back to the hotel on their own. And then John remembered sitting in the lounge, contemplating the unconscious women, the booze too heavy in his gut, and whether this was really what he wanted for his life, whether pissing off his father should be his only motivation, and then that kid had come out of Joe's room, hair rumpled and golden skin marred with kiss-bruises, and John had been surprised but not dismayed that Joe had picked up a boy (it was San Francisco, after all).

John really couldn't be blamed for not connecting the dots between the pale, slender, debauched boy in the half-light and his uniformed, efficient XO over a decade later.

Physicist did the math, and John realized - that must have been right around the time Evan joined up with the Air Force, if John was calculating his time in grade correctly. He'd been a major when he'd shipped out to Atlantis, been a major for five years there, but he'd also been a major when he was at the SGC on SG-11. And in all the time John had known Evan, he'd only ever had relationships with women (and not very long-lasting relationships at that).

"John?"

Evan's voice startled him out of his contemplation.

"Did you need something?" Evan wore his usual patient, friendly expression.

 _Let me do this,_ Joe said.

John nodded. _Okay._ And he stepped aside.

When he came back to himself hours later, his eyes were wet with unshed tears, and he was sitting on his bed. Down the hall, Evan was silent – or was he even there? John glanced out the window. Rodney and Jennifer's cars were both parked where they were supposed to be. John's car was still in the garage. Was Evan still home?

"What happened?" John asked.

 _Apparently he's in love with me,_ Joe said.

Julian snorted. _That's not news._

_He's been in love with me this entire time._

_He's been in love with some idealized, romanticized version of you,_ Julian countered. _It's not the same thing._

 _But he's been good to us,_ Traci said. _Even when he didn't think we were the same as the boy he fell in love with. And then even when he did know – he's been good. He would be good to us, if –_

"If what?" John asked.

 _We all know you're in love with Rodney,_ Joe said. _We're all a little bit in love with him. We can't help it, because you love him so much. If I...with Evan. That would ruin things between you and Rodney. Forever._

John sighed and buried his face in his hands. He was exhausted. Had Joe been crying? Even if he hadn't, he'd been through the wringer. "I'm not hanging around hoping Rodney breaks it off with Keller. You know that."

 _But there's always been a sort of understanding,_ Julian pointed out. _That Rodney will always command the majority of your affection._

 _Which isn't fair to Evan,_ Joe said.

"It's not like Evan's hanging around hoping I'll fall out of love with Rodney." John stood up, began to pace his room. "Wait, is he?"

The imprints chorused, _No!_

Because Evan really was that decent a guy.

John made a decision. He opened his door and tip-toed down the hall, eased open Evan's door. Evan was sitting on the edge of his bed, resting his elbows on his knees, head bowed in contemplation.

"Evan?"

Evan's head came up sharply. "John?" He always seemed to know, instinctively, which imprint was dominant at any given moment.

John closed the door behind him, approached carefully. "I don't know what Joe said to you –"

"It doesn't matter."

"Your happiness matters to us too, you know. You're no longer XO. It's not your job to make sure we all live happy, easy lives. The continued safety of the planet and the galaxy are not dependent on how well we get along. We're adults. We're supposed to take care of ourselves. You're supposed to take care of you, too." John knelt so he was eye-level with Evan. "And you're not as happy as you could be."

"I am," Evan said. "With all that we have between us, everyone in this house, this is as good as it's going to be, and I'm okay with that."

"You deserve more," John said.

Evan shook his head. "No one deserves anything in this life."

John took a deep breath. "I can give you – I can offer you one night. You and Joe. Me and the others totally gone."

"I already had my one night," Evan said softly, "and it got me this far. It can get me a little further."

John leaned in and kissed him.

The kiss was like coming home. Memories slammed through him, Joe's memories, sensation and scent and emotion. Evan made a broken sound and pulled him closer, deepened the kiss, and John could feel Evan's heart hammering through the thin cotton of his t-shirt.

Evan wrenched himself backward. "I can't. I can't do this. Not to you, not to Rodney. Joe's in there, but –"

"Evan –"

"We can be lovers tonight, or friends forever," Evan whispered. His voice shook. "I can't do both. If you want to do this tonight, I'll have my bags packed tomorrow. But if you want me to still be here tomorrow –"

"It's not what I want that matters," John said. "It's what you want."

Evan reached out, pressed a trembling hand over John's heart. "I'm just one man. You're so much more. If this goes wrong, too many hearts break, not just mine."

John couldn't argue with that logic, but he wanted to damn logic and –

What? Ruin his friendship with Evan? Ruin Joe's friendship with Evan? Ruin Rodney and Jennifer's friendships with him too?

Was this how Evan felt, every time he'd looked at John on Atlantis after that first encounter with Joe?

But John had made a similar decision, hadn't he? Not telling Rodney about the moment they'd shared when Rodney's memory was failing, when he was on the cusp of something with Jennifer but it could have (should have, some of the imprints said) gone the other way.

He nodded and stood up, turned away.

"Good night, Evan. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"Good night, John."

The door clicked closed, and John went back to his room. He stood in the middle of the carpet, numb, aching for himself and for Evan and everything between them that had never been.

Joe said, _Is that offer still on the table? The one about cloning your body for me?_


End file.
